1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording and playback apparatus and method, a terminal device, a transmitting/receiving method, as well as a storage medium, which enable the user to easily make a search with respect to a large amount of music data stored in or recorded on a storage or recording medium incorporated in the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, the so-called CD changer containing many CDs (Compact Discs) and automatically playing back audio data recorded on the CDs was practiced. In such a CD changer, several tens to several hundreds pieces of CDs are contained in one housing, and one of the CDs is selected with a predetermined operation for automatic playback. Audio data recorded on CDs can be played back orderly for each of the CDs, or at random in units of CD or a piece of music recorded on each CD by selecting a plurality of CDs. That type of CD changer is mostly employed in stationary fashion, i.e., by being fixedly installed in a room.
However, the above-described CD changer had a difficulty in realizing continuous playback because a CD exchange time is required even in the automatic playback mode. Also, a CD changer containing 100, 200 or more pieces of CDs is very inconvenient to carry and install in place because of an increased size and weight of the housing.
To overcome those problems, instead of the CD changer, there has been proposed an audio server employing a recording medium, such as a hard disk drive, which is relatively small in size, but has a large storage capacity. In the audio server, audio data recorded on each CD is read, and the read audio data is coded and compressed by a predetermined method. The compressed data is recorded and stored in the hard disk drive. By using a hard disk drive having a storage capacity on the order of 6 GByte, data of about 1000 pieces of music can be recorded. The audio server is superior to the above-described CD changer in that continuous playback can be easily realized because there is no necessity of exchanging CDs from one to another unlike the CD changer, and that the housing size can be reduced because a larger number of music data can be recorded in one unit of hard disk drive.
As mentioned above, an audio server can store a large amount of audio data. It is therefore necessary to input and store some data for search so that the user can find desired data from among the audio data stored in the audio server. The data for searching may include, for example, the titles of CDs and the titles of musical compositions (songs, etc.).
When the user enters or designates the title of a desired musical composition, for example, in the audio server, corresponding audio data is searched for based on the title of the musical composition and the found audio data is played back.
However, a CD does not generally record information attendant on the CD thereon, such as the name of player (singer), the title of music composition (song), and the title of the CD. Accordingly, a problem has been experienced in that when the user records and stores audio data recorded on a CD into an audio server, the user has to enter the information attendant on the CD into the audio server by himself or herself.
For example, the user has to enter the attendant information in the audio server by manually key-inputting text data or by taking in a jacket image of the CD with an image scanner or the like. Particularly, in the case of recording and storing audio data of many CDs at a time, the problem is more serious because it is very troublesome to enter the attendant information for all the CDs.
On the other hand, a record area called TOC (Table Of Contents) is provided in a CD, and information regarding the playing time of each set of audio data on the CD is recorded in the TOC. Also, it is known that the CD title can be identified based on the TOC information. In view of the above, one would conceive a system for providing information to the audio server by constructing a database that includes the TOC information and the CD title information in a correspondent way.
The following two methods, for example, are potentially possible to realize such a system. According to the first method, the database is constructed in a server on a network, e.g., the Internet, and the audio server is connected to the Internet via the public telephone line or the like. Then, when audio data recorded on a CD is recorded and stored in the audio server, the database on the Internet is searched based on the TOC information of the CD to obtain the CD title information via the Internet. According to the second method, the database is constructed in a storage or recording medium of the audio server, and the CD title information is obtained from the database in the audio server.
However, the above first method has accompanied the problems that maintenance, management, etc. of the server installed on the Internet takes a substantial cost and an interface to the Internet, such as a modem, must be provided on the audio server side as well. In addition, since the audio server is connected via the Internet to the server in which the database is constructed, the charge of line use for connection to the Internet is increased.
Also, the above second method has accompanied the problem that since the database is constructed in a recording system incorporated in the audio server, an attempt to equip the database with a wider variety of information would need a very large storage capacity and would occupy a substantial space of the storage or recording medium.
Further, because new CDs are released regularly, the contents of the database are required to be updated successively. The update of the contents of the database is performed by utilizing the Internet in accordance with the first method, and the above-described problems occur.
An object of the present invention is therefore to provide a recording and playback apparatus and method, a terminal device, a transmitting/receiving method, as well as a storage medium for enabling the user to easily make a search with respect to a large amount of audio data which is recorded on and read out of CDs and then stored in a storage or recording medium incorporated in the apparatus.
To achieve the above object, according to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recording and playback apparatus comprising a first playback unit for playing back a first storage medium; a second playback unit for playing back a second storage medium; a first reading unit for reading identification information of data stored in the first storage medium; a second reading unit for reading, based on the identification information, additional information stored in the second storage medium and corresponding to the identification information; and a storage unit for storing the additional information in correlation to the data or the identification information.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recording and playback apparatus comprising a first playback unit for playing back a first storage medium; a first reading unit for reading identification information of data stored in the first storage medium; a transmitting unit for transmitting the identification information read by the first reading unit; a receiving unit for receiving additional information stored in a second storage medium and corresponding to the identification information, the additional information being read out of the second storage medium based on the identification information transmitted by the transmitting unit; and a storage unit for storing the additional information received by the receiving unit in correlation to the data or the identification information.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a terminal device comprising a first playback unit for playing back a first storage medium; a receiving unit for receiving identification information of data stored in a second storage medium; a reading unit for reading, based on the identification information received by the receiving unit, additional information stored in the first storage medium and corresponding to the identification information; and a transmitting unit for transmitting the additional information read by the reading unit.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recording and playback method comprising a first playback step of playing back a first storage medium;
a second playback step of playing back a second storage medium; a first reading step of reading identification information of data stored in the first storage medium; a second reading step of reading, based on the identification information, additional information stored in the second storage medium and corresponding to the identification information; and a storing step of storing the additional information in correlation to the data or the identification information.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a transmitting/receiving method comprising a first playback step of playing back a first storage medium; a first reading step of reading identification information of data stored in the first storage medium; a transmitting step of transmitting the identification information read in the first reading step; a receiving step of receiving additional information stored in a second storage medium and corresponding to the identification information, the additional information being read out of the second storage medium based on the identification information transmitted in the transmitting step; and a storing step of storing the additional information received in the receiving step in correlation to the data or the identification information.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a transmitting/receiving method comprising a first playback step of playing back a first storage medium; a receiving step of receiving identification information of data stored in a second storage medium; a reading step of reading, based on the identification information received in the receiving step, additional information stored in the first storage medium and corresponding to the identification information; and a transmitting step of transmitting the additional information read by the reading unit.
According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a storage medium storing additional information corresponding to identification information of data stored in another storage medium.
With the first, second, fourth and fifth aspects of the present invention, identification information stored in a first storage medium is read, additional information corresponding to the identification information is read out of a second storage medium based on the identification information, and the additional information is stored in correlation to the data or the identification information that is stored in the first storage medium. Based on the stored additional information, therefore, a search can be made on the data or the identification information stored in the first storage medium.
Also, with the third and sixth aspects of the present invention, identification information stored in a second storage medium is received, and based on the received identification information, additional information stored in a first storage medium is read corresponding to the identification information stored in the second storage medium. The read additional information is then transmitted. Based on the additional information, therefore, a search can be made on the identification information stored in the second storage medium at the transmission destination.
Further, with the seventh aspect of the present invention, since a storage medium stores additional information corresponding to identification information of data stored in another storage medium, the additional information obtained upon playback of the storage medium can be used to make a search on the identification information of the data stored in the another storage medium.